Patent application EP 1 714 886 A1, which is owned by the applicant, discloses a thermoform packaging machine comprising a laser cutting unit which cuts out packages from a composite film consisting of, for example, two films that are sealed to one another. Such an intermittently operating thermoform packaging machine with high performance (packages per minute) often has an overall machine length of more than 10 meters. In such machines a forming station for forming troughs in a bottom film/foil is located at a first end of the thermoform packaging machine and a cutting station is located at a second end. Additional stations, such as an infeed station (or filling station), a sealing station, a labeling and/or printing station, are provided between said forming station and said cutting station. The packages are to be cut out along the contour of the sealed seams such that on the edge of the package a sealed seam will remain, which has a minimum width on the one hand and the most uniform possible width on the other. The bottom film is taken hold of on the side by means of two clamp chains and conveyed from a first to a second end of the thermoform packaging machine. This may lead to variations in the advance of the film, for example, due to chain elongation. Problems entailed by these variations, such as different widths of the sealed seams after the cutting of the packages, are compensated for by providing an increased width of the sealed seam, so that the smallest tolerance-conditioned width after cutting can still have the necessary minimum width. The space required for such sealed seam widths must be taken into consideration when designing the tools in the thermoform packaging machine. Sealed seams having a large width additionally require high pressures or a long sealing time for producing the sealed seams.